Chapter 37: Complaints
“Yeah… yeah… haah… I get it!”
I’m at Fuyunagi-san’s house again.
She’s on the phone with someone right now.
Her tone was sharp, making her irritation blatantly obvious.
Most likely… the person on the other end was Fuyunagi-san’s mother, that beautiful, elegant, yet intimidating woman from before. I’m almost certain of it…
“Don’t make me repeat myself. I’m not your toy, nor your servant. Don’t expect me to just obey whatever you tell me!”
The argument between mother and daughter is getting heated.
Fuyunagi-san was practically shouting into her phone, to the point of almost spitting on the screen.
No, it’s not like the sight of her raising her voice is all that rare, even for Fuyunagi-san. After all, just the other day she shouted her feelings and love for me at full volume in front of the entire class…
Since then, the number of guys glaring at me with jealousy has skyrocketed.
Apparently, someone recorded that moment, and it went viral on the school SNS. Thanks to that, everyone now knows two things: Fuyunagi Shizuku has absurdly heavy feelings for me, and that she herself is a seriously unhinged person.
Privacy is already a complete lost cause at this point, but she herself seems more or less pleased about it.
“Taku-chan is the one I’ve decided on! But you just go ahead and… anyway, what’s with that guy? That is supposed to be my fiancé!? Don’t be ridiculous! I’m the one who—ugh, enough!!”
Just as I was thinking this mother-daughter fight wasn’t ending anytime soon, she spat out a final complaint and pulled the phone away from her ear.
“Good work… was it mom…?”
“Yeah… honestly, it makes me sad to think someone like that is my blood relative.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s short-tempered, easily angered, and doesn’t listen to others! And yet, she goes on and on about herself… saying the same things over and over again… I really can’t stand it anymore…”
“Ahaha…”
I see… Fuyunagi-san’s quick temper and tendency to get angry must be inherited from her mother. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“So basically… she’s asking why you rejected Kuzuryuu’s proposal or something like that?”
“Yeah… something like that…”
After she told Kuzuryuu off, she had been grinning with genuine delight.
Really—she’d been grinning from ear to ear.
But now, she looked utterly crushed, as if she’d been thrown down into the depths.
“The old men think the only way to rebuild the Fuyunagi family is by getting under Kuzuryuu’s protection and receiving their benefits, but it’s ridiculous! It’s not rebuilding at all—it’s just being swallowed up by them! Why can’t they see that?”
“Well, yeah. Even if you were married off, you’d just become part of the Kuzuryuu family.”
“They probably expect to get some sort of ‘compensation’ for sending me over there. It’s ridiculous…”
Anyone would hate being used as a tool to make money.
And if it’s your own family doing it, even more so.
Of course, even Fuyunagi-san isn’t an exception to that.
“Taku-chaaaan… I’m feeling so miserable right now… comfort meee~”
Speaking in a soft, coaxing voice, she came and sat right down by my lap.
The weight, warmth, and softness of a girl spread across my legs.
For a high school boy in the middle of puberty, this sensation was… frankly, a bit too much.
A very specific part of my lower body naturally felt like it was about to reach ignition.
“Fufu, Taku-chan, your face is totally red. Still weak to this kind of thing, huh?”
“Most guys can’t resist that kind of thing. I’m doing better than most.”
“What is this hard feeling pressing against my butt? Your words are not convincing at all, you know?”
“I’m fine… no problem…”
What do you mean no problem?
There’s a massive problem.
In the end, there’s no way to resist the soft skin of a girl… I’m a perfectly normal, healthy teenage boy, after all.
After that sweet yet tense moment passes.
“You can stay over if you want, you know?”
“I’ll save it for another time.”
After exchanging our usual routine of lines, I started getting ready to head home.
Saying, “See you tomorrow,” another one of my usual lines, I left her house.
Recently it’s gotten really cold, and the sky starts getting dark much earlier.
Winter is coming.
The season that Fuyunagi-san is named with is coming…
I was getting sentimental for a moment when a car horn suddenly honked.
For a moment, I almost mistook it as directed at me, but I quickly dismissed that thought, knowing it couldn’t be, and was about to head home when…
Beep beep
The horn sounded again.
A car slowed to a stop right in front of me, and someone got out and started walking toward me. It was a handsome man, maybe in his late 30s or early 40s, dressed in a suit.
Why… me?
Character Summary (non-official)
- Majima Takuma / Taku (真島 拓真 / タク) — Taku is an utterly average high school boy in both appearance and ability. His hair and uniform are always neat but unremarkable, giving him the classic “background character” characteristic.
- Fuyunagi Shizuku (冬柳 雫) — Fuyunagi Shizuku is a stunning black-haired high school beauty with a mature, graceful aura. Her long, silky hair, elegant posture, pure and innocent atmosphere, and impressive figure—including her large chest—give her an appearance so gentle and comforting that a tired working adult might instinctively want to cling to her and call her “Mama.” Her looks alone make her feel like a UR-rarity heroine. At school, she’s admired as a pure, wholesome, and almost ideal girl—popular among girls, constantly confessed to by boys, and always at the center of her class. In private, however, Shizuku reveals a selfish, bratty, and emotionally unstable side. She’s clingy, easily upset, mentally fragile, and relies heavily on her boyfriend for emotional support while demanding secrecy and setting controlling conditions in their relationship.
- Sakurada Nagisa (桜田 凪咲) — Sakurada Nagisa is a gyaru and one of the central members of Fuyunagi-san’s friend group. With light-brown hair, piercings, and perfectly applied bold eye makeup, she has a flashy style but is undeniably beautiful—cute enough to stand out even among the popular girls. Sado Kengo’s current girlfriend.
- Natsume Kano (夏芽 華乃) — The class president. A dignified, serious beauty whose pure appearance gives her a charm distinct from Fuyunagi-san. She prioritizes efficiency, logic, and rationality above all else, resulting in a rigid, no-nonsense personality that makes her unpopular with most classmates.
Sado Kengo (佐渡 健吾) — A high-spec soccer club member who once acted as Shizuku’s fake public boyfriend. He is now Sakurada Nagisa’s actual boyfriend.
- Katou Susumu (加藤 進) — The textbook “protagonist’s best friend” character. He’s a founding member of the self-proclaimed “Unpopular Men’s Club”. Although he’s extremely jealous of Takuma for landing a girlfriend like Fuyunagi—thus “betraying” the Unpopular Men’s Club (a group Takuma never actually agreed to join)—Kato remains loyal to him despite both his jealousy and the negative public opinion surrounding Takuma.
- Fuyunagi Reiko (冬柳 澪子) — Fuyunagi Shizuku’s mother. A stunningly beautiful woman whose refined looks make it obvious where Shizuku inherited her charm. Beneath that elegance, however, lies a strict and controlling parent with deeply traditional values. Reiko is determined to restore the Fuyunagi family’s former prestige, and she sees arranging Shizuku’s marriage as a necessary step toward reclaiming their past glory.
- Fuyunagi Kanemasa (冬柳 兼政) — Fuyunagi Shizuku’s father. A highly capable and successful man who even took the Fuyunagi family name in order to marry Reiko. Despite the family’s rigid traditions, Kanemasa is the one person who genuinely supports Shizuku, encouraging her to live freely and choose her own path—including whom she loves. The only reason Shizuku’s mother and grandfather don’t openly oppose his stance is because his success and value to the family make him too important to antagonize.
- Kuzuryuu Shiori (久豆流 詩織) — Souma’s younger sister—a beautiful, sharp-tongued genius with strikingly foreign features. Despite her Japanese-sounding name, she is a natural blonde with radiant golden hair, inherited from their great-grandmother, and possesses elegant looks that stand out strongly against Souma’s more traditionally Japanese appearance. Cold, dismissive, and brutally honest toward her brother, she seems to harbor open disdain for him, even though she once adored him as a child. Academically, she is a prodigy who skipped grades at fifteen, now attending university with multiple acclaimed research papers to her name. Her intelligence creates a stark contrast to Souma, fueling his inferiority complex and twisted sister-obsessed longing.
- Kuzuryuu Souma (久豆流 創真) — Fuyunagi Shizuku’s arranged marriage partner.